Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment PDF
Preview Sustainable Media: Critical Approaches to Media and Environment
SUSTAINABLE MEDIA Sustainable Media explores the many ways that media and environment are inter- twined: from the exploitation of natural and human resources during media pro- duction to the installation and disposal of media in the landscape; from people’s engagement with environmental issues in film, television, and digital media to the mediating properties of ecologies themselves. Edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker, the assembled chapters expose how the social and representational practices of media culture are necessarily caught up with technologies, infra- structures, and environments. Through in-depth analyses of media theories, prac- tices, and objects including cell phone towers, ecologically-themed video games, Geiger counters for registering radiation, and sound waves traveling through the ocean, contributors question the sustainability of the media we build, exchange, and inhabit and chart emerging alternatives for media ecologies. Nicole Starosielski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is author of The Undersea Network, an exploration of the histories, environments, and cultures of transoceanic cable systems, and co-editor, with Lisa Parks, of Signal Traffic: Critical Studies of Media Infrastructure. Janet Walker is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated with the Environmental Media Initiative of the Carsey-Wolf Center. A specialist in documentary film, trauma and memory, and media and environment, her books include Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust and, with Bhaskar Sarkar, Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering. This page intentionally left blank SUSTAINABLE MEDIA Critical Approaches to Media and Environment Edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sustainable media : critical approaches to media and environment / edited by Nicole Starosielski and Janet Walker. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-138-01405-3 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-138-01406-0 (pbk.) — ISBN 978-1-315-79487-7 (ebook) 1. Mass media and the environment. I. Starosielski, Nicole, 1984– editor. II. Walker, Janet, 1955– editor. P96.E57S87 2016 070.4'493637—dc23 2015035526 ISBN: 978-1-138-01405-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-01406-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79487-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC This book is dedicated to Constance Penley and for Ariel Nelson This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Figures x Acknowledgments xii Introduction: Sustainable Media 1 Janet Walker and Nicole Starosielski PART I Resource Media 21 1 500,000 Kilowatts of Stardust: An Ecomaterialist Reframing of Singin’ in the Rain 23 Hunter Vaughan 2 Pipeline Ecologies: Rural Entanglements of Fiber-Optic Cables 38 Nicole Starosielski 3 Making Data Sustainable: Backup Culture and Risk Perception 56 Shane Brennan 4 “There Ain’t No Gettin’ Offa This Train”: Final Fantasy VII and the Pwning of Environmental Crisis 77 Colin Milburn viii Contents PART II Social Ecologies, Mediating Environments 93 5 Mediating Infrastructures: (Im)Mobile Toxicity and Cell Antenna Publics 95 Rahul Mukherjee 6 The Lack of Media: The Invisible Domain post 3.11 113 Minori Ishida 7 Ping and the Material Meanings of Ocean Sound 128 John Shiga 8 “Going the Distance”: Steadicam’s Ecological Aesthetic 146 Amy Rust PART III (Un)sustainable Materialities 161 9 Ecologies of Fabrication 163 Sean Cubitt 10 Re-thingifying the Internet of Things 180 Jennifer Gabrys 11 So-called Nature: Friedrich Kittler and Ecological Media Materialism 196 Jussi Parikka PART IV Scaling, Modeling, Coupling 213 12 Think Galactically, Act Microscopically? The Science of Scale in Video Games 215 Alenda Y. Chang 13 Toward Symbiosis: Human-viral Futures in the “Molecular Movies” 232 Bishnupriya Ghosh Contents ix 14 Coupling Complexity: Ecological Cybernetics as a Resource for Nonrepresentational Moves to Action 248 Erica Robles-Anderson and Max Liboiron 15 The Invisible Axis: From Polar Media to Planetary Networks 264 Peter Krapp Notes on Contributors 281 Index 285
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